Bazaarvoice, an API-first company with a robust developer ecosystem, relies heavily on API usage data to understand developer behavior, identify trends, and make informed business decisions. Historically, accessing and analyzing this data, stored in Elasticsearch logs (powered by the ELK stack and archived in S3 buckets with a 60-day window), presented significant challenges. Existing solutions lacked the ability to provide comprehensive, interactive reports and insights over specified time intervals, hindering effective decision-making. This project addressed this critical gap by developing a solution that provides enhanced data visibility and actionable insights directly from both live and archived data.
Project Goals
- Provide real-time and historical API usage data visibility.
- Enable interactive reporting with flexible filtering and data visualization.
- Empower business users, engineers, and administrators to gain meaningful insights into API consumption trends.
- Facilitate data-driven decision-making related to API strategy, resource allocation, and developer support.
Technical Solution:
To achieve these goals, I developed an integrated solution leveraging Elasticsearch and Tableau:
- Elasticsearch Integration: Established a direct connection with Elasticsearch to access live API usage data. This enabled real-time monitoring and analysis of API activity.
- Data Pipeline to Tableau: Created a robust data pipeline to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data from both live Elasticsearch and archived S3 storage into Tableau. This pipeline ensured data availability for both current and historical analysis.
- Tableau Reports and Dashboards: Developed interactive Tableau reports and dashboards with a range of filtering and visualization options, including:
- Geographic Distribution: Visualized API usage based on geographic location to understand regional trends and usage patterns.
- Usage Statistics: Provided key metrics such as API call volume, error rates, and response times to assess API performance and stability.
- Time Series Analysis: Enabled analysis of API usage trends over specified time intervals (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly) to identify patterns, seasonality, and growth.
- Other relevant metrics and visualizations as needed to address specific business requirements.
Results and Impact:
This project delivered significant benefits to Bazaarvoice:
- Improved Data Visibility: Provided a single, unified view of API usage data from both live and archived sources, eliminating data silos and improving access to critical information.
- Enhanced Reporting and Analytics: Enabled interactive reporting and data visualization, empowering users to explore data, identify trends, and gain actionable insights.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Facilitated data-driven decision-making related to API strategy, resource allocation, developer support, and business planning.
- Increased Efficiency: Streamlined the process of accessing and analyzing API usage data, saving time and resources for engineers, business users, and administrators.
Skills Used
MySQL
Advanced
PostgreSQL
Intermediate
Redis
Beginner
Elasticsearch
Intermediate
Amazon RDS
Advanced
AWS
Intermediate
Tableau
Intermediate
Python
Beginner
Kibana
Intermediate